Snowbound

Twenty-One

Peggy Tyler reached the stand of red fir just above the lake roads fork at ten minutes before seven. Her mother had returned from the Chiltons just after Matt’s telephone call, and Peggy had told her she was going for a walk and then to the inn for a while. At six twenty she had left the house, at the western end of Shasta Street, and had turned right instead of left and slipped through the thick growth of trees well to the rear of All Faiths Church, circling toward the fork. She had seen no one, and she was certain no one had seen her.

She positioned herself at the bole of one of the firs nearest Mule Deer Lake Road, shivering slightly inside her furtrimmed parka, and looked down into the village. Shining hazily through the thin gauze of snow, the lights seemed more remote than they actually were. The streets were typically deserted, and car headlamps were nonexistent.

Now that she was here, waiting in the heavy darkness and the kind of whispering quiet you found only on mountain nights, she was more nervous than she had been earlier. But it was an anticipatory feeling, born not of apprehension but of exhilaration. The past few days had been oh-so-deadly dull, with nothing to do except to watch barely discernible images flickering on the television screen and nowhere to go except out into the very environment she so passionately hated. The prospect of an adventurous balling session in what was literally her own backyard was intoxicating: a lovely and audacious private joke to be played on all the smug little people who lived in this damned valley, one of the few experiences of her life in the Sierra that she would be able to look back on with fondness and pleasure.

Of course, there was a certain hazard involved, though not nearly as great for her as for Matt. She didn’t give a hair what Hidden Valley thought of her, her mother included, and she didn’t give a hair for Matt’s saintly reputation; if their affair were discovered, it surely wouldn’t have any real effect on her long-range plans. The only consequence of discovery, as far as she was concerned, would be that the goose who laid the golden eggs would be dead: no more generous cash presents like the thousand-dollar Christmas surprise. Still, she wasn’t worried. If Matt was willing to chance it-and it wasn’t really much of a chance, the way he had outlined it-then she was too…

A pair of lights moving in the village intruded on her thoughts, and she saw that a car had swung onto Sierra Street just beyond the Mercantile. It passed the church, and even though she was unable to distinguish the make, she knew it would be Matt’s. Behind the car, the village streets still appeared empty. She swiveled her head to look south along Mule Deer Lake Road; the wall of night there was unbroken.

When the car approached the stand of fir, it slowed almost to a crawl. Peggy waited until it had drawn abreast of her hiding place and then hurried out and opened the door and slipped inside. The dome light did not go on, Matt had done something to the bulb-clever Matt! She curled her body low on the seat, whispering a greeting, as the car picked up speed again.

He reached out a hand and stroked her hair. “Peggy,” he said, “Peggy, Peggy.”

She smiled and moved over, resting her head on his thigh, the fingers of her right hand stroking over his knee. His breathing came fast and heavy and she sensed the front of his trousers begin to bulge. He said thickly, “There’s not a soul on the streets. I made sure of that before I pulled out.”

“No one saw me either.”

Peggy kept on stroking his leg, higher now, one fingernail moving across the bulge and making him jump convulsively. The area between her own legs had begun to moisten, to pulse demandingly; damn, but she was horny! “Hurry and get to the cabin, Matt. I’m on fire for you.”

“I know,” he whispered. “I know. ”

It seemed to take a long time for them to reach Mule Deer Lake, a long time before he said, “We’re almost there. I’m going to switch off the headlights now.”

“Can you see the lake?” she asked as the dashboard went dark.

“Yes. No lights anywhere, except in the cabin where those businessmen are staying. It’s just up ahead.”

Three additional minutes crept away, and then Peggy felt the car turn and the wheels bounced jarringly; they came to a stop. Hughes said, “We’re here.”

Peggy sat up, looking through the windshield: a blank wooden wall, the inner wall of the Taggart garage. Hughes had the driver’s door open, and she followed him out on that side. They clasped hands and left the garage and went around to the front door of the cabin, on the lake side. The flat, frozen surface of Mule Deer Lake, ridged with snow, stretched out into deep black; the opposite shore was totally obscured by darkness. The only light was a distant glimmer to the north: the businessmen’s place. It was so still that Peggy could hear the beating of her heart.

Hughes keyed open the door. “You see?” he said against her ear. “Nothing to worry about, not a thing. Nobody saw us, and nobody can possibly know we’re here…”

Kubion knew somebody was there.

He saw the darkly indistinct shape of the car coming without headlights along the lake road, saw it just as he was about to get into his own car parked in front of a two-story, green-shuttered frame house some distance down the shore. Through the thin snowfall he watched it swing off the road at the Taggart cabin and then disappear. Nobody was supposed to be living in that cabin-he’d found out in the village earlier in the day which of the lake dwellings were occupied and which weren’t-and he thought: Well now, just what’ve we got here? Eskimo kids looking for a place to hump?

Smiling fixedly, he slid into the car and started the engine, also leaving his headlamps off, and drove to within fifty yards of the cabin and parked on the side of the road. The building’s windows showed no light; whoever it was was probably still in the car. Kubion thought: Fuck her, I did-an old teen-age taunt-and laughed deep in his throat. He sat there for a time: still no lights. Finally he reached for the ignition key, started to turn it; hesitated and released it again. Oh hell, he thought, the more the merrier.

He opened the glove compartment and removed a flashlight and got out of the car. His eyes, wide and unblinking, shone like a cat’s in the darkness.

The interior of the cabin was winter-chilled and subterranean black. Hughes closed the door and said softly, “We’ll stay here for a minute, until we can see well enough to walk without banging into things.”

They stood pressed together, waiting, and eventually Peggy could make out the distorted shapes of furniture, the doors in two walls which would lead to other rooms. Watchfully, they crossed to one of the doors, and Matt widened it and said, “Kitchen,” and led her to another. Beyond this one was a short hallway, with a door in each wall; the one on the left opened on the larger of the cabin’s two bedrooms.

The bed was queen-sized and unmade, but folded across the foot of the mattress was a thin patchwork quilt; they would need that because of the cold, Peggy thought-later, afterward. They stood by the bed and kissed hungrily, undressing each other in the darkness with fumbling urgency, and then they fell onto the bed, kicking the last of their clothing free, their mouths still melded together. Peggy took hold of his erection in both her hands and heard him moan, and he broke the kiss to whisper feverishly, “Put it in, put it in, I can’t wait!” clutching at her breasts as if bracing himself, and she guided him over her and into the waiting wetness of her and he made a jerking, heaving motion as she drew her legs back and said, “Peggy, ah ah ah Peggy!” and came shudderingly.

The rigidity left all his body at once, and he was dead weight on top of her, his face pressed to her neck. Peggy’s lips pursed in mild annoyance, but when he raised his head finally to tell her he was sorry, he just couldn’t hold himself back, she said, “It’s all right, we have plenty of time, baby, we have plenty of time.” She held him flaccid inside her, moving her hips, seeking to make him hard again, and when she began to succeed she said smilingly, “That’s it, that’s my Matt,” and he commenced rocking over her and into her, expertly now, and it was the way it had been in Whitewater, it was perfectly synchronized and wildly good, and she could feel the beginnings of orgasm fluttering and building in her and flung herself upward at him, reaching for it, reaching for it — and then a bright white beam sliced away the blackness like a sudden spotlight and pinned their glistening bodies on the bed.

For a single instant they were blindly motionless, still locked together, still one instead of two. Then Hughes made a startled, whimpering sound and rolled away from her, twisting, sitting up. Peggy threw an arm reflexively across her eyes; fright and confusion replaced the passion inside her, dulling her mind, stepping up the staccato pounding of her heart.

A voice-harsh, amused, unfamiliar-said from behind the light, “Well, I’ll be damned. It’s the banker himself, by Christ, tearing off a nice little piece on the side.”

Hughes said in a stark, trapped tone, “Who are you, how did you get in here?”

“You left the front door unlocked. You must have been in some hurry, Banker, some big hurry.”

“You have no right to be here, you have no right! What do you want, why did you come in here, put out that light!”

“Hang loose, just keep your head together.”

At the periphery of her shielding arm, Peggy numbly saw Matt Hughes swing off the bed, shambling almost drunkenly, ludicrous in his nakedness. His face a matrix of fear, he started toward the white hole in the darkness.

“Stay where you are,” Kubion said sharply, “stand right there.”

“Put that light out, put it out I tell you!” And Hughes took another step toward the beam.

“Okay, you stupid hick bastard shit.”

There was a brief flame, like the flare of a match, to one side of the beam; there was a sudden roaring sound, localized thunder echoing in the confines of the room, and Peggy jerked on the bed as if she had been struck. Then she saw Matt stop moving, and saw part of his face disappear, and saw something red spurting, and saw his hands flick upward, and saw him begin to sag before the hands reached the level of his chest, and saw him fall into a loose wet naked pile on the floor.

“How about you, sweetheart?” Kubion’s voice said softly behind the light. “How about you?”

Peggy started to scream.